Han Feizi

The final important pre-imperial philosopher is Han Feizi (d. 233 b c e), famous as ‘the synthesiser of legalism' and credited with strongly influencing the policies of the Qin dynasty.^[862] The text Han Feizi concentrates on addressing the ruler, hence its appeals are often to politics.

Annals

The historiographical tradition in China emerged alongside these philoso­phical texts. The most important extant historiographical text dating to this period is called simply Annals, a title sometimes translated literally as Spring and Autumn. The Annals is a compressed record of historical events in the pre­unification state of Lu in 772 bce-481 bce. Its succinctness is alleviated in the received version by the Zuo Commentary, which accompanies it in all trans­mitted versions. Despite its name, the Zuo Commentary is itself historical; it is not primarily a set of explanations of or glosses on the Annals, although it contains some of those things.

Violence features largely in both the Annals and the Zuo Commentary. Military violence must inevitably form part of any account of such a turbu­lent period, including these two.

According to early hermeneutics, Confucius edited the Annals and the extremely brief descriptions of events contain in compressed form his judge­ments about them. Things like individual word choices and the presence or absence of personal names become, in this reading, indications of whether Confucius approved or disapproved of an action. While Confucius is unlikely actually to be responsible, the Annals does convey information through word choice, including in its accounts of violence.^[865]

In some situations it uses the verb ‘to kill’, such as in reference to the killing of nobles from outside Lu. Thus, at one place it records: ‘Someone from Chen killed their nobleman, Gongzi Guo’.^[866] This term contrasts with that used when, for instance, the Annals records the murder of a lord, which is referred to as assassination: ‘Xia Zhengshu of Chen assassinated his ruler, Pingguo'.^[867] The choice of terminology could then reflect a judgement about, for instance, the legitimacy of someone who claimed a position and was killed. In this understanding, the reluctance to depict violence turns identify­ing and evaluating those responsible for it into a hermeneutic exercise.

The era that followed the years covered by the Annals was the Warring States period. Its historical records are of a distinctly different character. In the present forms, the sources date to the early imperial period. They, particularly the most important one, the Historian's Records (Shiji), reflect a new historiographical development in the willingness to depict violence. This willingness, I argue, grew out of events of the early imperial period. To understand these records, I will first shift to the early imperial context.